So, basically, I'm doing a bit of a worldbuilding project, and I'm trying to figure out a plausible way for a modernish (basically anything from about 1990 to now) baby boom to occur, but having trouble doing so besides just handwaving it. Does anyone have any ideas?
How might a modern baby boom occur?
- Thread starter Twiggierjet
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Have close to 10% of the population not believe in birth control on religious grounds, show indifference to marriage modern living standards, and get the space and subsidies to make their communities viable. Getting there from 1990 is tough.
Israel has positive fertility rates largely because both secular nationalists and religious Jews want society to have high fertility rates. Maybe someone like Putin could promote this in Russia? But it would probably take several generations to get there.
Israel has positive fertility rates largely because both secular nationalists and religious Jews want society to have high fertility rates. Maybe someone like Putin could promote this in Russia? But it would probably take several generations to get there.
He very much is, it's just not working out because, well, points to the state of Russia
There were some succsess, I think in Sakhalin, one of the Russian majority region they were able to reach replacment level , and they counted that in order to implement it all over Russia you need to spend extra 3% of GDP in support of young families. So if Russia had government like in Singapore - less corupt but still with authoritirian qualities, plus focus more in internal development instead of ambitions there is chance to implement and reach replaycment level.
A nonnuclear WWIII destroys European and Asian industry, including the supply chains for making birth control pills.
It would require something happening to the economy, which would suddenly make dream of having a family become affordable.
Shunnedwarner
Banned
This. Many people want kids. They just cannot afford them. Something would need to happen so that wages increase massively or costs of living decrease massively to such an extent that one parent can sustain a family on one income again. Or at most one full time and part time income. Because child care is so insanely expensive that one parent staying at home or working at most part time is better than two people working full time and paying child care.
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Stop making house prices so ridiculously high that you need a full time job paying well above minimum wage just to pay a mortgage on anything built of actual bricks.
My dad bought their house at a time when banks would lend up to around three times annual wages (the bank wouldn't let them count my mum's wages towards their income because they were getting married so she'd be leaving work to raise children soon).
I'm on a good wage now (far better than the factory job he was working in the late 70s when they got married) and looking at Zoopla for the house prices on mum's road (she's still in the same house) you're looking at more than four times my gross wage and having to find a deposit equivalent to nearly six months of my gross wages. Nobody working a £10-12 an hour factory job could even think about saving that kind of deposit or affording to get a mortgage for that amount and that's just a small three (two and half would be more realistic since the little bedroom is barely more than a box room) bed terrace on the Wirral.
I'm going to go against the grain of the majority here, which has so far been the socially middle class (of which the financial and economic expectations are closer to the lower upper class if not higher) offering socially middle class solutions (and knowing that those are financially impractical for most governments).
The counterpoint is that poor people are having more kids than the middle class, especially those of the socially middle class. Thus governments can create the conditions for additional population growth more cheaply by creating the conditions for a larger lower/working class. This can be easily achieved through reigning in consumerism (i.e. kneecaping domestic advertising, the economic shortfall made up through maintaining strong export sector) and limiting higher education (but maintaining strong technical education), thus creating skill workers with relatively low social expectations.
Some additional policies that can be done it maintaining 3rd spaces, small close knit communities, and multigenerational households in order to offload the majority of the childrearing costs to the people themselves in nonmonetary ways.
The counterpoint is that poor people are having more kids than the middle class, especially those of the socially middle class. Thus governments can create the conditions for additional population growth more cheaply by creating the conditions for a larger lower/working class. This can be easily achieved through reigning in consumerism (i.e. kneecaping domestic advertising, the economic shortfall made up through maintaining strong export sector) and limiting higher education (but maintaining strong technical education), thus creating skill workers with relatively low social expectations.
Some additional policies that can be done it maintaining 3rd spaces, small close knit communities, and multigenerational households in order to offload the majority of the childrearing costs to the people themselves in nonmonetary ways.
Regress women's rights, birth control and sex education?
The issue is, if given a choice, many women simply don't want to be baby factories.
The issue is, if given a choice, many women simply don't want to be baby factories.
Affordable housing. Free healthcare. Free education. You will be back over replacement rate in no time.
That just creates an underground birth control supply. Which is exactly what happened during the Victorian era.
Someone else rightly mentions that the poor have more children than the middle class (both within and between countries), so money isn't the be all end all. Malthus was wrong because people don't spend their extra money on pumping out more kids, they spend their extra money on luxuries. Middle and upper class people could afford to have more kids if they cut out luxuries like going out to eat or vacations (and become more thrifty and creative with the money they do have), but not many people are willing to make those sacrifices, for perfectly understandable reasons. I've known tradcath families with 8-10 kids that make it by on one income, but chances are they aren't bringing their kids to Disney or going out to eat at Outback or Olive Garden once a month like regular upper-middle class families with two kids might.
funny how where 2 of the 3 are in place birthrates are in some of the worst decline then
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The only way I could see this happening would be a massive religious revival. Plenty of countries offer generous subsidies and programs for having children, and yet it can't get it anywhere near replacement level. Thus, you'd need a cultural shift towards having kids, which I think only religion could do. How you'd get a religious revival in the west this side of 1990, I know not.
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